


Me Without You

by rebelqueen



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellarke, F/M, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant, Temporary Amnesia, Trauma, season 3 never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-27 14:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7621933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelqueen/pseuds/rebelqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Begins after Season 2 (we are going to pretend for a moment Season 3 never happened for a moment). </p>
<p>After Clarke runs off after the events at Mount Weather, Bellamy spends months looking for her. When he finally finds her, she has lost all memory of the past two years. She doesn't remember coming down to Earth, but more importantly she doesn't remember Bellamy.  Will Bellamy be able to handle losing her one more time? Will he be able to get his Clarke back, or is she gone forever?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started at a one shot, but I think it is too long for just one chapter so I split it into two. Sorry if it is totally cheesy :)

     It had been three months since Clarke had left Bellamy to pick up the pieces after what they had done in Mount Weather. It had been three months without so much as a single blonde hair being found in the forest. At first, he had been willing to give her space to heal. He knew how much the Mountain had taken out of her; he knew because it had left him with a similar hole digging into his soul.

     Yes, at first he had been willing to let her go, but that peace had only lasted for about a week before he was too overcome with worry to just sit still in camp and twiddle his thumbs until she decided to return. What if she was hurt? What if grounders had gotten to her? What if she needed him and he had no way of knowing? At night he was haunted by images of her floating down the river or bleeding out in some field. He could always see her, but never could he seem to reach her, and he would wake up with his heart in his ears and a thin layer of sweat along his brow. 

     So, after one week he began searching. He recruited anyone and everyone who was willing to help him comb through the nearby woods in search of her, but every night they would return to Arcadia empty handed and disappointed. At first the search parties had been full of people who remembered everything that Clarke had sacrificed for them and their safety. After a few weeks the numbers began to dwindle. By the end of three months, it was down to Bellamy and Monty, with Kane or Abby joining in on the rare occasion that they did not have too many other duties in camp to attend to. But Bellamy refused to give up hope, despite the sorry looks that he was beginning to receive from the others in camp. She was out there somewhere, and she needed him. He knew she needed him; he could feel it.

     On day 98, Bellamy received a frantic radio transmission from Monty as he was searching a small cluster of caves a few miles to the north of Arcadia. Bellamy fumbled with his radio, suddenly forgetting how to work his fingers, his heart hammering in his ears as he asked Monty to repeat himself. The whole forest seemed to still and quiet in anticipation of Monty's response. Three deafening heartbeats later, Monty's voice crackled through the static of the little handheld radio. 

     "Bellamy, I found her! She's here, Bellamy! I found her." Bellamy's breath caught in his throat and he had to blink back relief from flooding his eyes. Monty was only a few miles away. 

     "Clarke?" He called her name into the radio, trying his hardest to keep the desperation out of his voice, but knowing he had failed miserably when his usual low bass cracked, turning momentarily into a soprano. He needed to hear her voice, he needed proof that she was really there, that this wasn't another dream where he would get there just in time to see her die again. A quick calculation in Bellamy's head told him he could get there in 30 minutes if he ran.

     "She's unconscious." Monty said after a brief silence, unsure of how to break the news to Bellamy. "I'll need help carrying her back to camp."

     Bellamy was running before Monty had even finished speaking. She was hurt. He had been right; she had needed him, and he was too late. Bellamy was far from being out of shape, but he cursed his legs for not being able to run faster. Twigs and branches reached out for him, scratching his skin and snagging his clothes as he zipped past. The world had kept him away from Clarke for long enough, there was no way in hell that he would let it slow him down and delay him from getting back to her a minute longer. His lungs burned with a fire that matched the one burning in his legs. He crested a hill and saw Monty sitting beside a crumpled body, her head cradled in his lap. He slid to a stop inches away from her and dropped to the ground. The skin covering his palms shredded with the force of his momentum against the pine-needled floor. Bellamy probably would have not noticed if the ground had been covered in razor blades in that moment. 

     "Clarke." Her name came out in a breath. He reached out to touch her face, half afraid that she would dissolve under his fingertips.

     Her hair was matted in blood where she had received a pretty severe blow to the head, but there did not appear to be any other serious wounds on her body. He called her name again, a little louder this time. He needed her to wake up. He needed her to open her eyes. The heart in his chest did not want to go another minute without hearing her voice; he couldn't think of anything more important in the world than hearing her voice.

     "We have to get her back to camp. She needs a doctor. She's lost a lot of blood. We have to get her back to Abby." Monty tried talking reason into his friend, using calm, soothing words. Bellamy looked like he was about break, and there was no way that Monty could get them both back to camp by himself. Luckily, Bellamy nodded, his face filled with a sudden determination. The older boy lifted Clarke from where she lie on the ground as if she weighed nothing at all, making Monty suddenly feel very weak in comparison.

     They were met at the gates by a flurry of people. Hushed whispers surrounded them as they walked through the throng of onlookers. Clarke was alive. Bellamy took no notice of the people around him as he made a beeline for the med bay. Someone must have gotten word to Abby that Clarke was here and injured, because she came running out to meet Bellamy, helping to clear the path for him as she fussed over her unconscious daughter in his arms. Once Clarke was laid out on a cot in their little make shift hospital, Abby and Jackson took over taking her pulse and running all sorts of tests that Bellamy did not understand. Bellamy pulled up a chair right beside Clarke and found her hand. After one look at Bellamy's face, neither Abby nor Jackson dared to ask him to get out of their way. He spent the next three days and nights at her bedside waiting for any sign that she might be waking up. It wasn't until day four that he allowed Octavia to talk him into returning to his own bunk to shower and get some rest, and even then it was only with the assurance that he would be notified the minute Clarke woke up. 

     Eight days passed without any signs of consciousness or awareness from Clarke. Bellamy made it a habit to visit her on his lunch breaks and after his guard shift every day. He had read somewhere once about people in comas being able to hear you if you talked to them, so he made a point to tell her all about his day and ended each visit with a whispered plea to wake up. 

     "I need to you wake up now, Princess." He would tell her under his breath, her hand limp in his. "It's time for you to come back now. You see, it's no fair that you get to have this little vacation while I still have to get up every day. I wish I could just stay in bed for a week too, but you don't see me doing it, so you need to wake up now." And every day his prayer was met with her silent, steady breathing. 

     On day nine, Jackson found him while he was standing watch by the fence. 

     "Clarke's awake." Bellamy rushed back inside immediately, not bothering to find someone to replace his watch or tell anyone that he was leaving. He could hear Jackson calling behind him, "Bellamy, wait that's not all. There are some complications. You can't just rush in there," but Bellamy wasn't listening anymore. Clarke was awake. 

     He saw her sitting up in her cot, Abby sitting beside her talking quietly about something important looking. If his head had been a little clearer in that moment, he might have noticed that Abby was not as happy as she should have been about Clarke being awake, but he was not thinking clearly. His head was too full of what _he_ wanted to say to Clarke. He had been thinking about the first thing that he would say to her for months, and suddenly every single one of those speeches alluded him. Clarke was awake. 

     Abby looked up as he approached and stood, her face was a mix of emotions, none of them happiness or relief. "Bellamy, wait." She cautioned him, hands up in front of her defensively, as he closed the distance between them. He should have noticed something was wrong.  

     Clarke turned to look at him when her mother said his name, and Bellamy's heart ceased beating. It was the moment he had been praying for for so long; Clarke was looking at him. She was awake and she was looking at him, but her eyes remained blank as she followed his movement toward her. The look caused him to stop. It felt like somebody had body slammed him and knocked the air out of him completely, only worse. Clarke was looking at him with nothing but the vague curiosity you would offer a stranger who came barging into your room. Not an ounce of recognition played in her eyes as they met his.

     His eyes shot to Abby in desperate need of answers, his jaw clenching with anxiety. Clarke's mother rushed around Clarke's bed to meet him. She pulled him aside with a soft nudge, careful not to break the already cracking boy before her. 

     "What's wrong with her?" His voice was strained as he kept his eyes locked on his friend over Abby's shoulder. His eyes darted to Abby when she said his name, she pretended not to notice his pained shallow breaths or the panicked look in his eyes

     "She experienced pretty severe trauma to the head, Bellamy. We suspected that brain damage might have occurred, but we did't have the equipment here to check for swelling of the brain or skull fractures so it was hard to tell for sure." She paused as she  gauged how to tell him the news. "There appears to be some pretty extensive memory loss. I told Jackson to warn you before bringing you in so that it wouldn't be such a shock. She doesn't seem to remember anything about being imprisoned on the Arc or being sent to the ground. It seems like the whole last couple years are gone." 

     "All of it?" 

     "She won't know who you are, Bellamy." Abby saw through his question to what he really wanted to know. "The others need to know before they try and visit her. Raven, Octavia, Lincoln, Monty...They can't see her unless they are ready to deal with the fact that she won't remember them." She continued talking, but Bellamy heard none of it. His eyes were back on Clarke who was watching them curiously, a frown furrowing her brow. 

     "I want to talk to her." He interrupted whatever Abby was telling him. Whatever she had been saying seemed like the least important thing in the world next to talking to Clarke. 

     "She needs to rest, we need to reintroduce her to everything slowly. I don't want to overwhelm her." Abby tried to reason with him.

     "Just let me talk to her, please," he pleaded. 

     She stared at the desperate boy in front of her and considered his plea for a few moments before nodding her head in assent. Bellamy let out a sigh of relief, thanked Abby, and rushed past her to Clarke's bedside. Clarke's blue eyes watched him the entire time, but never with any spark of recognition. Bellamy planted himself gently beside Clarke on the thin mattress with a weak, wavering smile. 

    "Hey, Clarke." His voice came out a hoarse whisper. How do you tell someone who doesn't know you what they mean to you? That you missed them? How worried you were? Before he could form a coherent sentence in his mind, Clarke spoke.

    "I can tell by the way you are looking at me that I should know who you are. I don't know who I am to you, but I can tell that it's somebody important." Bellamy let out a small laugh at her nonchalant tone through it all. 

     "I think you're taking this better than I am, Princess." He smirked and reached for her hand before thinking better of it and pulling his hand back away, but not before Clarke noticed the gesture. 

     Clarke stopped his retreat with her small hand over his. Bellamy's insides twisted as he curled her fingers around his palm and gave a small squeeze.

     "Bellamy, right?" She asked, her voice ripped Bellamy's eyes away from their hands and back to her face. For a moment, hope blossomed in his chest before he remembered that Abby had said his name when he had first entered the room. "I think the only reason I am taking it better than you is because I don't know what I've lost. I wish I remembered what happened between us that made you run in here the way that you did. My mom says that I have over two years lost." 

     "Trust me, Princess, if I could find a way to forget the past year, I would do so gladly. It hasn't exactly been a joy ride." Clarke saw through the crooked smirk he offered her.

     "Is the ground really that bad?" Clarke asked, unbelieving. "I can't believe we are actually here, I can't wait to go outside and see it. You have no idea how much I used to dream about getting to the ground." Her eyes were wide with hope and excitement, a look Bellamy didn't think he had ever seen on her face before. It broke his heart to realize that. He tried to remember a time when he had that same optimism, but came up short. 

    "We all used to dream of the ground, Princess. Let's just say it wasn't all it was cracked up to be." He shot Abby a cautious look as she pretended not to eavesdrop from a few feet away. "But that's all a story for another day. Your mom doesn't want to overload you in one day." He tried to smile reassuringly and gave her fingers another squeeze, more for himself than for her. "You should get some rest." He slipped his fingers out of hers and stood.

    Clarke reached out and stopped him as he began to retreat. "Wait," she started. Her eyes looked up at him, suddenly uncertain. "Why were you the first person they sent for when I woke up? Who are you?"

     How could he even begin to explain their relationship? Their experiences on the ground together had created a bond so deep and complex that it seemed impossible to relate to someone who didn't have it. Without those memories who were they to each other? The thought that they might never get back to where they had been caused Bellamy to sway a little on his feet. He looked down at her, unable to answer and trying to combat the panic rising in his chest. 

    "I can't lose you too." Those were the only words that came to him, and they were not even his own. They were Clarke's words to him in, what was beginning to feel like, another lifetime. "So do me a solid here. Rest. Recover." He paused and looked away from her, trying to reel in his emotions. "Remember."

    She must have sensed how little hope Bellamy had behind his words because she spoke. "I will remember, Bellamy. I just need you to not give up on me until then." 

    His eyes snapped back to her at those words and he almost lost his breath. "I never have." She gave him a curious look and Bellamy had to excuse himself from the room. The sun hit his face as he exited the med bay, and for the first time in months he as able to take a deep breath. Clarke was awake. This had been what he had wanted. Never once had he considered that she wouldn't be Clarke anymore when she came back. 


	2. Chapter 2

 

    Five days passed with Bellamy avoiding the med bay like it held the plague. Actually, even when they had experienced a plague from the grounders shortly after landing on Earth, he had been more willing to present himself than he was now. He made excuses to himself and the people around him for why he hadn't gone in to visit Clarke again. He was busy with work. He had things to take care of. He just hadn't had time. The saddened, skeptical looks that he received in return every time told him exactly how much weight his weak excuses were carrying. Especially when it came to Octavia. He had been avoiding her almost as much as he had been avoiding Clarke.

     "She's been asking about you," Octavia would say whenever she caught her brother with idle hands. "You should go see her."  

     "I'm busy, O," his reply always came. "Maybe tomorrow, if I have a few minutes." 

     And then she would give him that sympathetically knowing face that she was so good at, offer him a pat on the arm, and leave him hating himself even more than before. Bellamy would throw himself into any odd job or chore that needed doing in an attempt to justify his actions to whoever was paying attention. Every night he receded to his cot with aching muscles, sweat-stained clothes, and a heavy heart. 

     Bellamy let out a frustrated sigh as his sister sat down across the fire from him. He stared into the flickering flames, concentrating hard on not looking up at her. He braced himself for what he knew she was about to say. 

     "Bell," she kept her voice hushed and calm, as if trying to approach a scared child in danger of running. He clenched his jaw and focused harder on the fire. The wood popped loudly, sending a flurry of red sparks drifting up against the dark expanse of sky. "Talk to her." Bellamy's dark eyes darted up to meet hers, a look of warning flashing across his features. "She needs you, Bellamy. We've put up with your pouting and excuses for long enough. She is confused and hurting, and she needs you." Octavia paused to gauge her brother's emotions before proceeding in a lowered voice. "You spent months killing yourself looking for her. You sat by her bed for days. You wouldn't eat or sleep. And now you have her back and you just abandon her? That makes no sense." 

     "I abandoned her?" He stood, his voice booming and incredulous. "She abandoned me! What we did in Mt. Weather, we did together, and then she left me to pick up these pieces by myself. I needed her, and she left. Shit, I still need her, and now she might be gone forever." Bellamy looked away from the flames, trying to bat down the surge of emotion flooding through him. 

     "What are you talking about, Bellamy? She's right there." Octavia gestured toward the med bay.

     Her heart broke at the sight of her brother like this. He had never let on how much the event at Mt. Weather had affected him. He had maintained a brave appearance while he had been breaking inside. A part of her was hurt that he had never come to her. How many times had Bellamy been there to hold her up when she had been teetering on the edge? How had she not been able to do the same for him?

     "No," Bellamy shook his head, the same desperate pleading look in his eye that was becoming all too regular with him. "That's not her. That's not _my_  Clarke." Octavia's eyebrows shot up at the qualifier. "That is some bright eyed, innocent girl who still thinks that the ground is some paradise. In there is a girl who would have never pulled that lever with me. She has no blood on her hands. She has no idea what we did. She doesn't even know me."

     "She knows enough about you to ask for everyday. She has never asked where anyone else is, only you. I don't know how, but she knows that you are the one that she needs to lean on to get better. I'm tired of watching the pain on her face every time I tell her that you are too busy to spare a minute to see her." 

    His shoulders slumped in defeat and he lowered himself back down onto the log he had been using as a bench. Resting his elbows on his knees, he ran his hands back and forth through his dark curls. 

     "What am I supposed to say to her? I don't know how to be a stranger to her. Too much has happened. What if we never get back to where we were? I can't spend the rest of my life knowing that she is right there, and at the same time completely gone."

    "My mom says that there is a very good chance of me regaining my memories over time, I just need to be around familiar people and situations." The sound of Clarke's voice coming from behind him raised the hairs on the back of Bellamy's neck.

     He sat up straight, too scared to turn around as he heard the sound of boots coming closer. Octavia's eyes darted between the two warily as Clarke took a seat next to Bellamy. There was a good foot of distance between them, but by the look on Bellamy's face Octavia would have thought Clarke had sat directly on his lap. Her brother's eyes were impossibly wide, face stunned, body awkwardly stiff. She watched as he attempted to school his features and reminded himself to breath. 

     Octavia broke the heavy silence. "Abby released you?" She managed to sound surprised even though they all knew that it was just a matter of time before Abby was forced to let her daughter resume her life. 

     "Yeah," Clarke watched Bellamy from the corner of her eye, "she said it would be good for me to get back into a routine."

     Bellamy shifted, torn between inching away and scooting closer to the girl beside him. It hadn't been too long ago when casual touches had been a regular occurrence between them. Now even this close proximity seemed almost taboo. Octavia, sensing the tension between them, made an excuse for herself and left the two alone together. After a few excruciatingly silent moments, Bellamy willed himself to look at her. She was still staring at the fire, her face tight in concentration. It was clear that she wanted to say something, but had not quite worked out the words yet. Bellamy watched the shadows dance across her features as the flames flickered and swayed in light breeze. 

     "How long were you listening?" He had to know. 

     She turned to face him. "I wasn't trying to eavesdrop." 

     "That's not an answer."

     "I know you're mad at me. I hurt you by leaving, and now you're mad. But it's not a violent or hateful anger. It's-" she paused and looked for a way to describe what Bellamy was feeling. Bellamy wasn't sure that a word for what he was feeling existed. Something in her expression changed and her mouth moved, but no words came out. She tried again, asking the question that had plagued her mind for almost a week. "Were we...were we together?" 

     The question sounded so innocent that Bellamy almost laughed. "No, princess. We were not lovers." A brief smile spread across his lips as he said the words, but it quickly vanished. 

     "Then what were we? I've been trying to understand our relationship, but no one seems to be able to give me a straight answer. I know I was important to you, and I can only assume that the feeling was mutual, but what were we to each other." 

     Bellamy blinked. "I wish I knew how to answer I that." The words felt thick in his mouth, sour on his tongue. "You were the most important person in my life, next to Octavia. You were my partner. You were my friend. But you were also...more." He stared down at his hands, her blue eyes suddenly too much for him to handle. 

     "Did we love each other?" Her question hit Bellamy square in the chest, leaving him breathless, unable to answer. He stared at her, mouth working, but at a momentary loss for words. He stood abruptly, turning away. Clarke quickly followed suit. "I'm sorry. That was a dumb question. I shouldn't have asked." She reached out to touch his arm.

     "I should go to bed." His voice came out so quietly that he was surprised Clarke had heard him, but she nodded, her hand stilling inches away from his jacket sleeve. He turned to go, but her voice stopped him. 

     "My mom said that it would be good for me to visit the drop ship, that it might help bring something back. I was hoping that you could take me tomorrow. Maybe to the drop ship." She suggested as casually as if she had merely been asking if he wanted to hang out sometime. 

     "I don't know if that's a good idea." Bellamy doubted his ability to be alone with her for an entire day without doing something he would regret.

     "Please." 

     Bellamy took in a deep breath at looked to the heavens for strength. None came to him. 

     "Fine," he conceded after a few moments. "We should try and leave early. It's not safe to be out there after dark." 

     Clarke offered another nod of her head as is assent. With his back turned to her, he could not see the small smile that graced her lips. 

 

\-----------------------

 

     They left camp a bit later than Bellamy would have preferred. He and Clarke had been ready with time to spare, but Abby was having trouble letting Clarke leave her side for an entire day. She had continually checked and re-checked the healing scab on the side of Clarke's head while double checking their day pack what felt like a hundred times to make sure that there was sufficient food and water for at least four days, just in case. Abby had also made sure that Bellamy was armed well enough to fight off a whole hoard of grounders. When Bellamy realized that Abby was not about to quit anytime soon, he was forced to resort to sneaking Clarke and himself out of camp in a mad dash when the older woman was not looking. 

     He could heard Clarke's laughter as they darted into the trees that surrounded the camp. He stopped them when he knew they would be out of sight, and the pair paused to catch their breath. Clarke's eyes glittered rebelliously up at him, her cheeks pink from the exertion of running. For a moment, looking down at her, Bellamy forget where they were, where they were going, until Clarke spun away from him to take in her surroundings. 

     "Wow." The word fell as a whisper from her lips as she watched the way the sun broke through the leaves overhead, casting broken shadows across bushes and the ground. 

     Small birds hopped from branch to branch, sending angry chirps down at the two intruders standing dangerously close to where their nests perched high in the branches. In the distance, they could heard the sounds of the river rushing over and past the rocks in its way. Clarke rushed toward the sound, her hand slipping out his as she vanished through the trees. His fingers felt suddenly cold without the warm pressure of hers against them. He looked down at his hand. He hadn't even realized that he had grabbed her hand in their escape from her mother. 

     Bellamy found Clarke kneeling beside the cold, clear water seconds later. As he got closer, he could see her watching a group of tiny fish babies hiding in a clump of moss from potential predators. They darted in and out of the green fuzz faster than the eye could follow. Her eyes moved up from the little colony and across the surface of the water, watching the way the light refracted off of the quickly moving ripples. She looked back up at him. 

     "It's beautiful." She said, breathlessly. 

     There was a look in her eyes that made Bellamy almost jealous of her newfound innocence. For a moment, he wished that he could see the world around them without being constantly reminded of the horrors that they had faced since landing back on Earth. From the moment the drop ship landed, he had been too busy running to take a moment to appreciate the beauty that surrounded him. 

     "We should keep moving. We have a long way to hike today if we want to make it back before nightfall." Bellamy helped her back to her feet, and they continued on their way. 

     If he had ever doubted her amnesia before, her indifference as they approached the area where their lives had simultaneously begun and ended squashed it. She tromped through the trees as if heading to a picnic, not a graveyard with too many memories. The red curtain hanging from the doorway became visible through the brush, and Clarke did not even bat an eye. 

     They stepped through a gap in the barricade, and for the first time Clarke flinched. There were still remnants of charred bones that had not yet been carried away by animals or crushed beyond recognition lying scattered on the ground. It felt like a lifetime ago that Bellamy had watched the drop ship door close on him and run for his life just in time to avoid being one of those skeletons.

     He had fought so hard to get Clarke back after that day only to watch her walk away from him again.

     Clarke approached the mouth of the drop ship and fingered the red cloth hanging over the threshold. When she looked back to Bellamy, her brow was pulled tight. "What happened here?" 

     "Jesus, Clarke." Bellamy scoffed sardonically and lightly kicked a piece of the barricade that had long ago fallen.  "It was freaking family barbecue. What does it look like?" His sarcasm was met with a chiding look from Clarke. He had put this all behind him, the last thing he wanted to do was relive it. He shook his head in a silent plea. "We did what we had to." 

     "We did this? We killed all of these people?" She asked softly, disbelieving, a horrified look in her eyes.

     Bellamy's chest grew heavy with shame. "We did what we had to do to survive." He forced the words out through gritted teeth. Her look of horror raised a whole new set of emotions in him. "Dammit, Clarke. You don't get to unload this burden onto me. I can't carry it by myself. Everything we did, we did together." Too many emotions were boiling up in him. This had been a bad idea. He could feel his voice rising, but couldn't stop. "We were supposed to be in this together," a short pause, "and you left!" His voice cracked over the words. Clarke's eyes scanned his face, unable to find words. "I fought so hard to get you back, only to watch you walk away again. And when I do finally get you back-" he gestured vaguely to the girl in front of him, "I finally get you back and you're not even you. So what am I supposed to do? Just let you go, accept that you're just gone, that I'll never have you back. I can't do that. I can't do this alone. I need you. I need you, and you don't even know who I am!"

     "Bellamy, I'm sorry." It sounded more like she was apologizing for his dead grandmother instead of breaking his heart.

     "You're sorry? You can't apologize for something you don't even remember doing. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. You think this is bad?" He gestured to the charred graveyard, his voice cold and hard. "This isn't even what chased you away. You should see what we did at Mount Weather. I was okay with doing things that kept me awake at night, as long as you were there at the end of the day to tell me that it was alright, that we had done the right thing, that I wasn't a monster."

     "Bellamy."

     "I have been stuck here trying to put myself, and our people back together, while you were off doing God knows what, worrying the hell out of me. And now, I don't even get to be mad at you for it." Tears tracked down his face. 

     He should have been embarrassed to be crying, but it was okay because it was Clarke. Except it wasn't really Clarke, was it? He angrily wiped the tears from his cheeks at the thought and turned away from her. He could feel her eyes on his back as he entered the drop ship. 

     He sat on a pile of old crates that had been left there when the 100 had abandoned the drop ship. He put his head in his hands and tried to focus on his breathing in an attempt to calm himself down, but it did nothing to lift the crushing weight off of his chest. He heard the curtain move and felt Clarke's warmth as she sat beside him. 

     "I'm still me." She said quietly. Bellamy didn't look up. "If we were able to build our relationship before, we can get there again. Even if I don't remember, we can get back there eventually." His shoulder tensed as she touched him. Finally, he looked up herewith a defeated frown. 

     "What if we can't? The experiences that brought us together are not exactly replicable, Clarke. What if it is just gone?" 

     "I don't believe that." Clarke paused, seeming to think carefully over what she was about to say as she searched his face. Her hand reached out and closed over his. "From the moment you burst into the med bay, something in me reaching out to you. I hadn't even really met you yet, and I already trusted you. That tells me that a part of me remembers you. I just have to somehow remember that memory. In my head, I only met you a few days ago, and already I cannot imagine life without you. That seems like cause for hope to me." 

      "What if I've forgotten how to hope?" He squeezed her fingers in his. There was something reassuring in touching her. 

      "Then we'll remember together."

      She turned toward him and pulled him into a hug. For a moment, he sat too stunned to move as she tucked her head into his neck, then his arms were around her. He cradled her against him, holding her as he were afraid she might vanish at any moment. 

     As she sat in his arms, an image popped into her head of a very similar hug. They were outside, somewhere in Arcadia. They had been separated for some reason. She could see him entering the gate that surrounded the camp. Others were with him, but she had seen only Bellamy. She could feel the overwhelming urge to run to him and throw her arms around his neck, the relief that came when he returned the hug with near-crushing force. He had pressed his face into her hair then, just as he did now, as if he were having trouble believing that she were real. Clarke remembered not having even noticed Octavia standing right beside Bellamy until she had teased them. 

      Clarke let out a watery laugh into Bellamy's neck that caused him to pull away. There was moisture on his neck and collar from her eyes. He cupped her face gently, his eyes worried as he scanned her face. 

     "You're crying." He sounded almost panicked, his eyes asking all of the questions he could form. 

     "I had a memory, Bellamy." He looked surprised, almost as if he misheard her. She stood, pulling him up with her. "I had a memory!" she exclaimed excitedly again. Bellamy blinked, still trying to wrap his head around what she was saying. "When I escaped Mount Weather, and you got back to camp. I ran to you. I hugged you. Octavia was there, and Raven." She was talking so fast that all of her words were blending into one excited jumble of noise. 

     Bellamy laughed, his body filling with relief, a genuine smile on his face. She remembered something. Not a lot, but something. And it had been about him. He pulled her back into a hug, an indescribable joy muddling his brain.  

     "I think I remembered something else too." Clarke pulled away, a curious look in her eyes. 

     "What?" He prodded her. Maybe the more she talked about remembering, the more she would remember.  

     "I remember something that I wanted to do, but never got to." 

      "Something you wanted to do?" Again, he was confused. 

      "Yes," Clarke smiled up at him. His arms were still around her, hers had fallen to rest on his chest. 

     "Well," Bellamy urged, curiosity getting the better of him. "Are you going to tell me?"

     "I think I'd rather just do it." She decided after a moment. 

      He gave her another confused look, but before he could open his mouth to ask her anything more Clarke popped up onto her tip-toes and brought her lips to his. His hands slid up her back to cradle her head, tilting her chin up a little to gain more access to her mouth. He couldn't have said in that moment how long he had wanted to kiss Clarke, maybe he hadn't even realized that he'd wanted to until it happened, but after feeling her in his arms and tasting her, he could imagine ever not wanting to kiss her. After a while, Clarke broke the kiss, breathless. 

     "Last night you asked if we loved each other." Bellamy said, barely able to hear his voice over his own heart. "I think the answer is yes." He looked at her and his smile grew wider. "I think it has been yes for a long time."

     Clarke returned his smile, nudging his nose with her own. "Even when I couldn't remember your name, I think I knew I loved you," Clarke whispered before kissing him again. 

     Bellamy could see the light fading from behind the drop ship's curtain as the sun lowered behind nearby mountains. It looked like they were not going to get back to camp before dark. It would probably be safer to wait until morning before making the hike back.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll post chapter 2 in a couple days. Thank you for reading :)


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